Taxpayers invested more than $500,000 on House unwanted sexual advances payments

Published September 10, 2026 at 5:49 pm

Taxpayers bore the cost for majority a million dollars in unwanted sexual advances settlements including members of your house, according to price quotes launched Thursday by the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights.

While the file, which amounts to 7 pages, does not consist of any bombshell discoveries, it provides a picture of previous settlements as Congress faces a fresh wave of misbehavior accusations and thinks about how to punish bad habits in its ranks.

It is available in action to a resolution embraced by the House looking for to remove more information on what some members have actually called the “slush fund.” While a law enacted in the MeToo age now needs legislators to pay out their own cash for harassment settlements and requireds public disclosure of information, that wasn’t the case before 2018.

Led by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., the resolution embraced in June needed both the OCWR and your house Ethics Committee to openly divulge a “single combined list” of House members who were the topics of unwanted sexual advances examinations “if it led to a payment of taxpayer funds.”

In July, the Ethics Committee provided a terse declaration stating it is “devoted to supplying openness for the American public on sexual misbehavior matters” however did not have the info Massie looked for.

The disclosure from OCWR, dated Aug. 31 however made openly offered on Thursday, mentions 7 legislators by name who were associated with unwanted sexual advances payments. 6 of those were formerly called openly in a release by Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., after she led an effort in your home Oversight and Government Reform Committee to subpoena the details.

The seventh, the late Rep. Alcee Hastings, was examined by the Ethics Committee throughout his time in Congress after a staffer for the Helsinki Commission declared undesirable advances. While the committee eventually closed the matter, the Treasury Department paid $220,000 to settle a claim associated to the accusations in 2014.

Hastings informed Roll Call in 2017 that he had actually not know the settlement and was “annoyed” by it.

All informed, the settlements connected to the 7 members called by OCWR amount to more than $550,000. Executive Director Martin J. Crane explained numerous cautions in a letter to House leaders.

The quantities consist of not just direct payments, however the approximated worth of things like promos or durations of administrative leave, he composed. And the records are insufficient, considering that the workplace when had a “retention policy” in location that needed damage of records 10 years after a case was totally closed. Under that policy, 32 case records dating in between 1996 and 2005 were damaged, according to Crane.

The file published on the OCWR’s site Thursday is partly redactedhowever an unredacted variation is offered for seeing in the Legislative Resource Center managed by the House clerk.

It likewise consists of an aggregate price quote of taxpayer funds invested in connection with accusations of unwanted sexual advances made versus House staff members. That quantity is a little over $67,000.

As he led the resolution in June, Massie stated while news reporting and subpoenas had actually currently emerged details about what he calls the “slush fund,” he thought he was casting a broader web and wished to discover something brand-new. “You should not need to go get a subpoena through a committee to go discover this,” he stated at the time. Massie did not right away react to an ask for remark Thursday.

The release of the file comes as your house deals with a bigger numeration over legislators’ habits towards personnel after 2 agents– Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and Tony Gonzales, R-Texas– resigned previously this year over sexual misbehavior accusations. Some members have actually pledged to promote more openness and responsibility in the after-effects.